How to Lead Belay - Top Tips from the Professionals!

hello and welcome to today's video, "how to video", today's episode we're looking at lead belay and in particular how to do it safely and appropriately as well as a few tips to do with your stance, position and then what to do if you've got big weight differences between your climber and your belayer with any kind of belaying it's important to maintain one hand on the dead rope at all times so whether that's bottom roping, top roping or lead belaying: one hand always on the dead rope. With lead belaying make sure, for instance, your right hand is on the dead rope, your left hand is on the live end of the rope, and as you pay out rope it's doing it in one continuous motion so both hands working together to move the live rope, we feed that dead rope through the belay to produce a little bit of slack for your lead climber to actually climb with. so with the lead belaying it's very important that as you're paying out rope you're very attentive to your climber so making sure you can see when they actually need rope so you can pay out a little bit of rope just as they're bringing it up to the quickdraw. Also want to make sure that you don't have too much rope, i.e. there's not so much slack on the floor that should your climber fall off they're going to end up with quite a long fall and potentially a ground fall likewise equally you don't want to have it too tight so that when they're actually climbing they're fighting against you and the belay trying to drag up the rope with them. that's very uncomfortable for the lead climber so with the amount of rope that you actually have in the system, the amount of slack that you have, it needs to be enough so that the climber can move around freely so they can climb up take a step up without having to be pulled back by the rope but also not so much that they're on for a big whipper should they fall off or even a potential ground so belaying stance: when you're belaying especially when you're on the ground, do make sure that your stance is strong enough that should the climber fall off, you've got some chance of actually bracing against the fall. best way to do this is to have one foot in front of the other, rather than two together, so one foot in front of the other gives your forward leg a bit more of a braced position should your partner come off and you actually get pulled forward a little bit. the best way to do this is if you have say your right hand on the dead rope the opposite leg should be further forward; so if my right hand is on the dead rope, my left leg is further forward in a braced position. when your climber first leaves the floor it's very important because you're not actively belaying them at this point there's no ropes in bolts, to actually spot them for their first couple of moves up until the point where they clip the first runner and in that instance that's when the belay kicks in you can take over with belaying as opposed to spotting in those first initial moves when you've got a bolt clip, or even in the second bolt, the climber is very close to the ground they're very close to the initial section of the Rope between you and the first bolt. if you stand too far back you create an angle between first bolt, the rope and yourself as the belayer, in which case if the climber falls off they're going to land potentially on that rope and cause a bit of rope burn. the best thing to do for them is to stand off to the side of the bolt and tuck yourself up right against the wall as well, that way should they come off in those first few moves they're gonna have a clean fall, not with the rope in the way and not with yourself in the way either. so should the worst happen and your climber falls off in the lead climbing situation a lot more force is generated than in the bottom roping situation so you're more likely to be pulled forward even if you're equal weights, potentially you'll get pulled a little bit forward that's where your braced position comes in handy. also because if you've been using the correct method and you've got your hand already semi locked off and down below as you feed the Rope through so hopefully you're already in a locked off position. maintain that locked off position as the climber falls so that you can arrest that fall properly what if you've got two climbers who are completely different weights i.e. a heavy climber and quite a small, light climber so in this instance when the heavier climber falls off the lighter climber no matter how braced they are they're going to get pulled forward and potentially pulled up into the wall so they've got to be ready for that and ready to brace themselves with their feet as opposed to their hands and letting go of the rope. To combat that if you have got a very light belayer compared to very heavy a much heavier climber you could use a variety of different things there is a device called the Ohm, which is a resistor that you put to the first bolt, and we'll be exploring that one in a later video. that helps reduce the force impacted on the belayer. you could use a sandbag if some climbing walls have sandbags. clip the belayer to the sandbag gives them a bit of extra ballast as they get pulled towards the wall and hopefully not pulled straight into the wall. the other scenario where you've got a much lighter climber and a heavier belayer; so in this instance the scenario being where the heavier climber would have come off and actually pulled the smaller belayer into the wall - that creates what's known as a soft catch so as a heavier climber falls, because the belayer is getting pulled in a bit, the rope actually gets let out a little bit enough so that it cushions the fall so the climber doesn't slam into the wall. in the opposite scenario where that light climber comes off because their so much lighter if the belayer were to arrest the fall and lock it off completely that opens up the climber to basically coming off, the rope going tight, and then them slamming into the rock/ into the wall. to prevent that situation where obviously you can injure yourself quite badly, in that scenario it's best to give the climber a soft catch so the belayer actively has to move forward as the climber Falls and the rope comes tight as they're falling. this can happen in two ways: if it's close to the floor then just moving forward a little bit to give them a little bit of a cushion so that you're not gonna allow them to deck out. if they're high enough up and you think they are on for quite a whipper rather than - to reduce the impact that that fall's going to have, to try and almost let out a little bit of rope or even move much further forward towards the wall to give them that much softer catch. hope you've enjoyed this video I hope you found it informative, if you've got any questions about it then do drop us a line in the comment section we'll try and answer as many as we can. as always if you're in any doubt or you're unsure of any of the things and you want a little bit more tuition it's best to hire in a mountain instructor

Channel: Climbing Nomads

Views: 92,445

Keywords: lead belay, how to lead belay, lead belaying, tips for lead belaying, the climbing nomads, lead, how to lead climb, belay, belaying, how to, tutorial, tips, lead belay technique, belay skills, climbing, indoor climbing, rock climbing, lead belay skills, belay device, belaying a lead climber, how to belay a climber, belay climber, belaying climber, skills, technique, climber, sport climbing, indoor rock climbing, how to belay, lead climbing, lead climbing tutorial

Id: _c0eTDCe_So

Length: 7min 21sec (441 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 30 2018